THREAD: President Trump yesterday pointed the finger at Congress for not confirming the "mission-critical" nominees for Covid-19 response jobs. That's baloney. Just last week, I wrote about the horrifyingly long list of jobs that Trump has left vacant.... politico.com/news/magazine/…
Come along for a tour of the top ten most head-smacking personnel vacancies, critical to the Covid Crisis, that Trump himself is responsible for inside the government....
2) Amid the dual challenges of a work-from-home-crisis and budgetary mess, the temp acting official filling in as the head of the US gov's HR department, @USOPM, is *also* filling in as the deputy director of the Office of Management & Budget, which is insane.
3) The head of @ICEGOV, who oversees its massive detention facility network amid a growing health crisis, has been there so long he can't even legally be referred to as "acting" any longer, he's instead the "senior official performing the duties of the director.
4) Still at @DHSgov, there's no Under Sec for Management nor Under Sec for Science & Tech, both roles that might be nice to have amid the Covid Crisis. There's also no one Senate-confirmed head of the DHS office that oversees its Chief Medical Officer. And there's no CIO or CFO.
5) At @FEMA, the agency Trump has put in charge of the Covid response, both deputy roles are vacant, including the one overseeing continuity planning in case something happens to the USG leadership (like, say, what happened to Boris Johnson in the UK, who ended up in the ICU).
6) At the Pentagon, where the Acting Navy Sec quit last week amid that aircraft carrier Covid debacle, they had to appoint the Under Sec of the Army to be Acting Navy Sec, since he was the only one of the *three* service Under Secs on the job. He'd been on the job for two weeks.
7) At Treasury, as it leads the nation's economic response to the virus, Bloomberg reported, "Of 20 Senate confirmed roles reporting to the secretary, seven aren’t filled, and four are occupied by acting officials." bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
8) At the VA, which oversees its own massive health care network and is legally a backstop to the civilian health care system, there's no Deputy Secretary, General Counsel, or Under Secretary for Health, all of which kind of seem like they'd be useful right now.
9) At the White House itself, Trump downgraded and effectively did away with the role of Homeland Security Advisor, the role created by Bush after 9/11 precisely to coordinate crises like Covid. (Obama's Homeland Security Advisor led the Ebola response, for instance.)
10) Meanwhile, amid all of this, the acting DNI, Richard Grenell, is still legally serving as Ambassador to Germany, meaning amid the huge economic uncertainty around Covid-19 epidemic the U.S. is without a high-level envoy to the largest economy in Europe.
These vacancies are all Trump's fault alone. Not Congress's, a pattern clear for the entire administration. Also: These vacancies are just facts. I'm not even mentioning troubling questions about the competency/experience/longevity of those filling in on these or other roles./END
All of that and more is covered here in my piece. Tl;dr? It's even worse than you can imagine. politico.com/news/magazine/…
